A term you'll meet in rhetoric and literary tropes.
Zeugma is a figure of speech in which a single word governs two or more other words in ways that are grammatically or logically incompatible. The result is usually witty — sometimes absurd, sometimes piercing — because the shared word has to do work across registers it does not really fit.
The word comes from the Greek for "yoke." Two words are yoked together under a single verb or noun that can only properly hold one of them.
Pope's The Rape of the Lock gives the most famous English zeugma: a young woman may "stain her honour, or her new brocade." The verb "stain" works literally on the brocade and metaphorically on the honour. The single word forces the reader to register both meanings at once, and the satirical point — that the young woman cares as much about her dress as about her virtue — lands without the poet needing to spell it out.
Another classic from Pope: Queen Anne "Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes tea." The verb "take" operates on counsel (figurative) and tea (literal). The implied judgment of the queen's priorities is in the joke.
Some rhetoricians distinguish zeugma from syllepsis:
In practice, the two terms are often used interchangeably, and "zeugma" is the more common label in modern criticism.
Dickens loved the device. "Miss Bolo went home in a flood of tears and a sedan chair." The verb "went home in" is yoked to a flood of tears (figurative) and a sedan chair (literal). The juxtaposition captures both Miss Bolo's distress and her wealth in a single line.
The Victorian novel uses zeugma constantly because it can deliver satirical judgment without explicit comment. The narrator simply yokes the wrong two nouns under one verb, and the reader supplies the rest.
Zeugma survives in contemporary writing because it remains economical. A single sentence with a well-placed zeugma can compress what would otherwise need a paragraph of commentary. Joan Didion is a modern master of the technique: her essays often pivot on yoked phrases that mix material and moral registers.
The device also lives on in stand-up comedy, where the yoked mismatch is often the entire punchline. ("She broke my heart and my favorite mug.")
When you spot a zeugma, the question to ask is: what judgment does the yoke imply? A zeugma is never neutral. The author has chosen to make a single word do double duty across incompatible terms, and the discomfort the reader registers is usually a moral or critical observation in disguise. Zeugma turns grammar into evaluation.
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